The Rain In Sevierville Falls Gently on the ...

My dog woke me up early this morning. Well, early for a Sunday anyway. We went out for our constitutional and it was pissing down rain, cold, and dreary. My feet got wet, my newspaper got wet, and the dog got wet. If you know your Jimmy Buffett, you could say my fin was sinking low big time. When we got back in, I asked myself 'what can I do now to increase the depths of my misery?'

And the answer: watch pissy Englishter Premier League soccer. Specifically, Derby versus Blackburn. The first half was scoreless and boring. I had hopes of seeing Benny Feilhaber (a/k/a Little Mostest, who bears a pronounced likeness to Brad Pitt circa Thelma and Louise). He didn't play. In fact, of the eleven men Derby had out there, Eddie Lewis appeared to be the only one actually playing the game. The rest of the team was out there making Fulham look good.

The second half started and in comes Benito. Derby score! A lead! Derby has a lead for the first time since like ... ever. Then they get the benefit of a pk call! They could double their lead!

Brad Friedel once was a goalkeeping god. Today he was not. He got lucky. Twice. Saved the pk, but didn't hang on to it. Derby stood there disbelieving, and instead of attacking the freaking ball that was bouncing away from Brad, they allowed him to crab crawl over to get it. Not long after, Blackburn scored. And then they scored again.

Benny had some good touches. And a lot of bad ones, like everybody else in a Derby shirt. More playing time, I think he'll be aight.

At Least I Didn't Have to Watch It

Fulham 1, Spurs ... 5.

Sigh.

Mr. Clinton Dempsey provides the Whites (who are, in a testament to pissy Englishterness , in red) the lone goal.

Here's hoping the new boss can keep them off Relegation Row.

Or that The Mostest From Nacogdoches finds a new team.

Informed, Organized and Catalogued.

That's how I like my Year Ends.

Second best part of this holiday season? The lists. The Best-ofs, the Top Tens, the Year-ins. I like to see what I missed, I like to see what I was cool enough to be in on. Cool, of course, being a relative term. As is "in on" - I think in most cases, with me, it's more like "happened by the most impossible set of circumstances to find quite blindly." But the lists, they are succinct and tidy; thus, by association, am I.

So, I found one or two here at Time's 2007 Pop Culture compendium. They also have lists in News, Arts & Entertainment, Science and Business. Like Lay's potato chips, I bet you can't read just one. The 10 Buzzwords gave me a name and a mission: freegan. I will never be a vegan, and I'll never dumpster dive for food, but I will do my best to shun mainstream consumerism. I like stuff, but it's taking over my life, the acquiring, the tending and the throwing away. The water cycle of material goods, if you will. It's food for thought. And that - the year ahead - is where my thoughts are at when they're not seized with sweaty-palmed panic over Christmas and all the doings. I want next year to be a great one, so maybe, just maybe if I plan a little, plot an outline - even if it's just in pencil, not stone - I can help that happen.

Food for thought.

And with that, I am outta here until after Christmas.

Happy Holidays, peeps!

It Wouldn't Be Christmas

Without kitsch. Patrick Star, you ARE my hero.

Filling The Void

with more bs.

I have nothing to write about. Not one iota of inspiration. Not one scrap of an idea. Not one morsel of information with which to litter the cyber-verse. MLS is dormant. Fulham, even with Mostest, is just not that fun to watch. There's not a whole lot of music happenings during the Christmas season other than caroling, and that's not going to feed my entertainment jones. My kids aren't doing anything cute. Well, "cute" in the adorable sense, not in the smart-assed teenage antics sense. Antic-ing may very well be taking place. I don't want to know.

But just when things seem dreariest, just when I think it can't get any darker and there is no light at the end of the long tunnel of same-ness and quasi-winter I have fallen into, along comes a little Christmas miracle.

Bless you, Giorgio Armani.

Just in Case You Wondered

Color me impressed!

Thanksgiving 2007

I made it! For real! And it was tasty!

Could have used a scoop of vanilla ice cream, but very very tasty.

Anyway, I want to give thanks for the fact that I only had to say the words "fat dripper" once this year.

See, it's high school come back to haint me. I took home ec the unfortunate year I was a freshman and my sister was a senior. We had a quiz on the names of various kitchen implements. I did not know the term "baster", but I knew it's purpose. Hence, "fat dripper."

I am calling a moratorium on all the various labels I have placed on my children and will hereafter do my utmost not to make them repeat embarrassing stories.

Otherwise, Turkey Day was fab.

Hope yours was too.

p.s. I am also thankful for anybody who ever reads this exercise in egotism. Because like Opal said in Because of Winn-Dixie, music (or, rambling in cyberspace) is better if someone's listening.

The Nelson Mandela Cup

We won it.

And closed out our national soccer year.

It wasn't a great game, as they go, but the pickings are slim here as the MLS season ends. Mostest had some moments, Freddy had one wtf moment - the bad kind - and who knew Steve Cherundolo could score?Soccer players. They come in all sizes.

Expansion Draft Tomorrow!

I thought this was supposed to be the off season. It's two days until Thanksgiving, tomorrow is my son's birthday and now I have to figure out who will become a Quake tomorrow from this list.

I knew I should've called in sick today.

Ok, San Jose can only take 10 players, and only one from each existing team. So, three lucky teams will get a pass. Lucky, of course, being a very relative term in MLS. I'd say FC Dallas would feel very lucky to have the Quakes choose Denilson. I mean, of course, if they *were* stuck with his contract, and they are not. RBNY fans would like to see Claudio Reyna chosen, but apparently management still thinks he's worth something.

Without any sort of logic at all, I pull out my Magic Crystal Orb of Knowledge, and out of the swirling twirling mists of sweat and desperation, I see the Quakes taking:

Ramon Nunez, of Chivas USA
Nicolas Hernandez, of the Colorado Rapids
Stephen Deroux or Guy Kpene, of D. C. United
Craig Waibel, from the 2007 MLS champs Houston Dynamo
Jose Burciaga, from Kansas City
Kelly Gray or Josh Tudela, from Team Beck-itt


That's 6.

Ok, from RBNY, they take Joe Vide if they have any sense at all. I'd choose Andy Dorman from the Revs, but I think he's headed across the pond so I'll go with Avery John. Ned Grabavoy out of Columbus and Dario Sala of FC Dallas complete my picks.


Tomorrow, 1 pm eastern I'll find out how right I am.


***UPDATE! UPDATE!

I got one right! Vide goes.

Say it ain't so, Joe.

Mathis Moseys Over to L.A.

Why?

It's a mystery rolled up in a dilemma riding a fast train to Huh?

I'm guessing it has something to do with the Expansion Draft, and hopefully he'll be Rimando'd (TM pending) right back.

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

I guess you could say it was an emotional moment.

Or maybe there's something we should know about these two.

There is indeed: they just won an MLS Championship. No word on Disney World.

Dynamo (sans Ching and Clark) 2, Revolution 1. Revs scored first (Twellman - always effing Taylor Twellman!) and I thought, that's it. May as well go clean the bathroom, because I'd rather scrub the mold off the toilet than see TNT go all Golden Boy on this game. My son convinced me to watch 15 minutes of the second half. De Rosario setup Ngwenya, who missed but picked up a lucky rebound and put that one away. Game on. Approximately 10 minutes later, De Rosario swatted in a pretty darn sweet header and that, friends and neighbors, was all she wrote.

I believe I saw Taylor Twellman weeping in the dying minutes, and I was glad.

(Well, ok, no, I actually felt kind of bad for him then, but keep it quiet).

Word Association

Or perhaps, song association.

It was a Warren Zevon song, to be precise. Carmelita. The first verse: I hear mariachi static on the radio/and the tubes they glow in the dark/and I'm there with you in Ensenada/and I'm here in Echo Park.


... and I got so homesick. Lonesome. Lost in a nostalgic haze.


I want to be 8 again. Beside a cold Pacific ocean. Under a big, big sky.

Bringing Sexy Back

to L. A.?

Ruud Gullit will get his freak on with the Gals.

I'm not at all sure that since the Coming of Beckham that they have lacked for sexy. But it will be nice to see a real team effort. I just want to make sure we're all on the same page as to what constitutes sexy and in an effort to make that perfectly clear, I offer these two examples.


This photo is many, many things but sexy, it ain't. I often wonder if he lost a bet and *had* to.

The water is overkill, btw.

















This photo is Sexy Incarnate. I just want to touch. I chose NOT to go with the obligatory Beckham photo because there's more than one side to sexy, see?

We Won the MLS Western Conference

and all we got were these lousy t-shirts. And baseball caps. Anybody else think it's funny to give soccer players baseball caps?

Ok, just me then.

Another fifty cents down the drain. I ended up rooting (and by "rooting", I mean half-heartedly watching and sometimes snoring) for Kansas City. So, on Sunday November 18, Houston meets New England in a high noon showdown. Woo. Hoo. I guess I'll watch and I guess I'll root for ...

New freakin' England.

The Streak Continues

My streak of cheering for losers, that is. Chicago toddled out of New England town, without a win and without an Eastern Conference championship. Without anything at all. And I am out one more quarter. I really should learn not to bet on these games. I'm going with Houston to beat Kansas City on Saturday, just because I want them to lose. I want them all to lose.

Anyway, cheerier news in L. A. I don't really think a lack of sexy is their problem, but it will be way cool if Cobi becomes assistant coach.


And a not-so-random hottie. I said it, and it came true. I am not ALWAYS a jinx.
So, rain is not always a bad thing.

Yee. Freakin' Haw. Eastern Conference Final Tonight

The Demon Overlords of New England versus the Satanic Sissies of the Chicago Fire. ESPN2, 7:30 PM.

No, I'm not excited about. The degree of indifference I feel would SLAY them if they could feel it. S-L-A-Y. But I'm gonna watch it. Because I am *so* dedicated to seeing New England defeated, broken and bloody that I'll even cheer for Cuauhtémoc Blanco.

obligatory soccer hotties here

Do You Ever Get The Feeling

the universe is trying to tell you something? Something deep, something purposeful and profound, and you're looking at it all as through a glass darkly?

Yesterday, it was all about Nancy Sinatra. Specifically, it was all about cover versions of Nancy's signature song, These Boots Are Made For Walking. Steve Hartford of MIXX 105.5 - which does not play MY favorites of the 70's, 80's, 90's OR today, btw - and who is almost talented, got his Weird Al on with the tune to commemorate the Bootings in the 'Burg. Hearing that made me remember the Operation Ivy cover on their one and only recording, Energy, which I was in desperate need of, being the day after the Hour Comes Back and my sense of when to go to bed and when to get up being all fucked up. I do appreciate that hour back. Anyway, Energy lives up to its name. The Pump It Up factor of Billy Joel is thorazine, Elvis C ranges from unsweetened iced tea to Diet Pepsi. Operation Ivy is the musical equivalent of a couple of Yellow Jackets washed down by a Red Bull/Jolt Cola cocktail. Good stuff.

So, imagine my delight this morning when I realize what the Universe was trying to tell me: Energy has been re-released today.

So, maybe you think, big deal. Maybe you think I should try to fine tune my Universal receptive vibes. I say to you, listen. And learn.

(warning - some graphic images are shown)

Another Saturday Night

and I ain't go no trophy.

Or even a chance to get a trophy. Not this year anyway.


If it could have happened any other way, I could live with it. Team Red Bull played hard. A consistent solid effort up and down the field. Even after Àngel went down, they hung in there. But they just couldn't overcome the wind, the rain and the ugly yellow boots of New England's Most Hated (and, blessedly, not pictured), Taylor freakin' Twellman.

God, I hate that man. Couldn't it have been anybody else? Parkhurst, for instance. And it was such a crap goal. Conway had a hand on it. Vide threw his body at it. Hunter Freeman almost blocked it. The wind. The remnants of a hurricane. Piss on that.

The highlights, such as they are. And they have been through the matrix, because they show the goal first, and then Àngel's injury. I hope he'll be ok. At least he has lots of time to recover.

Unlike Bruce Arena, who either decided to walk or got his walking papers today.

Let the (mind) games begin.

DC Down. And Out!

Let's all give that a big
YEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWW!

2-2 last night, 3-2 Chicago on aggregate. Gotta say "on aggregate" because that's this tournament's catch phrase. Or something. I think I complained about this last year - deja bitch!


Apparently, it was an awesome game. I saw the first half and dozed thru the second. I am thrilled with the results, I assure you.

Tonight's wish is for ... damn. I forgot. I believe I want Dallas to win, but really, it doesn't matter.

Come on, Red Bulls!

And because I did not post a gratuitous soccer hottie yesterday (although I thought the cat was pretty cute), I'll add another today.



and one more, just because...

The Fun Begins in

six hours and 50 minutes. As of right now.

What fun, you ask?

Football* Frenzy 2007. 7:30 tonight, ESPN2, the Chicago Fire travel to RFK to open a can of Whup Ass on D.C. United. At least, that is my prediction. So to make it come true, I'm employing the Power of Opposite, and placing $5 on D.C.

And that's just the start.

8:30 Friday, Dallas (Toja, yay! Ruiz! Boo hiss!) mosey down to Houston (De Ro Knows! Ching! is he well yet? and Ricardo Clark, who won't be playing but is everybody's hero).

Saturday. Josie will start things off with her final game of the season. With some luck, we'll win and our parents won't embarrass us. Then, a mad dash to the grocery store to stock up on chips, dip and suds because at 5 PM on FSC, Fulham takes on somebody in the Englishter Pissy League, and Mostest is due. 7:30 will find me at that same bat channel, watching (hopefully, prayerfully) the Red Bulls crucifying any hope New England ever had of a double. Here's hoping it's a good enough game I'm not tempted to check out Kansas City and Chivas at 8:30 on DK - no, wait. My mistake, it's not on until 10:30, so I can certainly watch it without interruption.

If I don't fall asleep first. Damn those West coast games.


Anyway, I'm all atwitter. It's the Blue Moon of MLS. The perfect alignment of the planets. The once a year Weekend That Matters. Win or go home.

Let's go, Red Bulls!




*borrowing the pissy englishter term for alliterative purposes.

Halloween - the aftermath, Part One

Part One, because I failed to get a photo of Josephine in her Elizabeth costume (Eastern version). My camera was dead! And by the time it had a little battery power, she was on a mission to capture as much candy as humanly possible. So, we will Do Over tonight.

These are our pumpkins. Mine is the skull, Josie's the evil looking jack o'lantern. Austin was puny and did not participate. Katie went off with her friends. Next year, we won't have any Halloweeners at our house.

*sob!*

It's True.

You can find anything on the web.*

I mean, who would have thought that Rancid, those righteous dudes carrying, nay, hurling the nuclear missile that is punk rock into the New Millennium (and beyond...), could be caught posing as Beach Boy Wannabes? Aruba, Jamaica, ooo I wanna take ya...

Help me, Rhonda.

I found it on RancidPunx.net, which is one cool place to find maybe not everything Rancid, but lots of things Rancid. I spent my lunch hour sifting through Getty Images to find that no, they weren't being the Beach Boys, they were being the cheesy wedding band for Tony Hawk's wedding in Fiji.

Cool!



*everything except a pattern to carve a mohawked jack o' lantern!

Say What?

Goals? We don't need no stinking goals.

Well, yes, we do guys. One or two, anyway. This was "our" leg. Our chance to smack New England around. It was me, wasn't it? I could not be there in nationally televised togetherness and you suffered for it.

But that was way that the playoffs went 'round, this opening weekend. Chivas is downed 1-0 by Kansas City. Dallas puts one by Houston for a win. Chicago snuck - well, that was a sneaky rocket, wasn't it? - one by D.C. Only this little scuffle in Estadio Rojo Toro managed to be goal free.

The next games are the do-or-die ones.

I say, bring it on. This is New York's year.

Hitting the Wall...

202 posts in.

Do I have iron-poor blood? A stagnant imagination? The curse of mediocrity? Maybe it's the granola and soy milk I've been breakfasting on for the last month. My mind seems to be made of mush. Mush. As in, I can't get a complete thought thunked. I used to blame this on my kids and their constant interruptions (which is kind of any oxymoron, I suppose - constant interruptions?). Maybe my thoughts are so inured to interruption, that they just automatically reset halfway through. Maybe it's My Age, and That Time in My Life. Could the mood have swung so far that it ain't swinging back? I haven't been doing my crossword puzzles - has my intellect (such as it is) gone fallow? Am I reading too much pulp fiction and not enough literature? Too much Law & Order and not enough Masterpiece Theatre? (Not that there ever was any Masterpiece Theatre). I'm just stuck and I can't seem to jostle my way out of it.

So, apologies in advance. The next few posts (few is a hopeful word here) are likely to be mindless soccer regurgitations, but I will throw in photos of soccer hotties to make them more palatable. The playoffs begin Saturday.

I shall meditate on that.

And this. *I* still think he's cute.

When Life Gives You Lemons

You stomp on Cuauhtemoc Blanco.

I like your attitude, Peter Vagenas.

Ok, so it was a metaphorical stomping, in the most metaphoricalest sense. The Gals could not find a way to win yesterday. And we, the entertainment-starved and Beckham-deprived soccer fans of America, are pretty darn pissed about it. It could have been a perfect Cinderella story, with Dave leading his sorry band of brothers to an improbable - nay, inconceivable! - run at that second best league honor: the MLS Cup.

Well, maybe next year.

I'm just sad. Sad that I won't see another Red Bulls/Gals smackdown this year. Sad that Dave's Inaugural Year was such a bust. Sad that I can't post Tim Armstrong's Oh No video again because I'm in love with Los Angeles. I'm in love with her sooooooooouuuuuuullllll.

Well, who's to say I can't? It's my blog, ain't it?




And I'll add a little something to keep the home fires burning, so to speak -

What Happens in Vegas...

Too bad these guys are in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland. I understand everything about this picture except the tennis ball and the tightness of Cherundolo's swim trunks, which somehow evoke one of Jean-Claude Van Damme's more alternative roles.


I applaud their security in their masculinity.

And I hope they're "skins" when they play Switzerland Wednesday.

The (Soccer) Weekend in Pictures

or, would I be able to express myself without parentheses?

(not that anyone would notice!)

Kevin Hartman makes a desperate attempt to crawl out of Giants Stadium as Juan Pablo Angel makes it 2-1, Red Bulls. JPA was also my fantasy captain, and with 69 points X 2, put me ahead of Austin AND Josie for the first time this year. Go, mom!




I think this photo sums up Saturday's slaughter (which is, of course, a relative term) of New England for the Columbus Crew. Something Faulknerian via Shakespeare - a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, because in the end, it didn't matter that they'd learned to score, that they'd learned how to come from behind or even that they'd learned how to win on the road. To the Big Show, they don't go. Again. I'm not calling for Sigi's head. Mostly, because I'm afraid he might EAT me. But it is my sincere hope that they can hold on to Schelotto and Gaven this winter.


And finally, let us now sing the praises of the Bright Blue Boot.



These belong to Damarcus Beasley (you can tell by the "Beas" there above the swoosh). All the cool kids are wearing them, from Landon D to the Mostest from Nacogdoches himself, Clint Dempsey.

Fun With Wigs

In the beginning was Juan Toja.


And in his hair, was power and strength and glory. And other things best left unnoticed.

The people saw this and said it is good. And a great craze swept Pizza Hut Park.



Soccer. It's all about the hair.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

or, How Hard Was It To Cheer For ANYBODY at the Lamar Hunt Open Cup Final?

On the one hand, you've got this twit scampering (yes, scampering!) up and down the field like God's Gift to American Soccer. I know his mama loves him. A lot of people think he's good looking. I just want to backhand him a goodun and wipe that smirk off his face.




On the other hand, how could I not enjoy the suffering of Carlos Ruiz?

I was all twisted in side. I like Toja (note to self: schedule haircut). I hate Ruiz. I like Michael Parkhurst. I despise Jay Heaps.

In the end, it was Viva la Revolution, death to FC D (a/k/a First Class Divers - well, Diver, anyway).

Bring on the playoffs.

meet the fam, v. feline

Meet Speck, the legless wonder.

No, he's not really legless. We call this pose "meatloafing" because, well, he looks like a fluffy white meatloaf. With a couple of burnt spots. Speck is our special needs kitty. He's got that idiot savant thing going. While he's a genius at killing small mammals and presiding lion-like over our yard, his vocalizations need work. His meow is like one of those silent dog whistles, just at the edge of human hearing. And his purr - well, I can purr better than Speck. He also has issues with doors. If he is in, he wants out and if he's out, he wants in. I think he would be driven mad by having a pet door at his disposal, so we don't have one. We call him Speck not because of the specks (otherwise, we'd call him "Specks" now wouldn't we?) but because our first sight of him as a little white speck hopping through the tall weeds next to our yard. He plays bigger than he is.


This is my little black boy Socks. My son always calls me a racist when I call him that. I don't mean to be. I call his brother my little white boy, so I guess I'm being equally racist, which in the confounding algebra of political correctness might reduce down to non-racism. I hope so. It would be difficult to stop calling them 'the white cat' or 'the black cat' at this point in their lives. Socks likes to hang out on the windowsill. His evil white brother only allows him the freedom of the living room and the master bedroom. Everywhere else, he gets attacked just for breathing. By the way, unlike his brother, he *can* purr. Quite nicely, the sound of which is one of the great pleasures of cat companionship. Many evenings we snuggle up together reading and/or watching tv. The only problem is he drools when he's happy.

So, those are our cats. Not great literature, sure. But a post! A post! My kingdom for a post!

Unlike Generalissimo Francisco Franco

I am still alive.

but buried in work. I will get back to slacking shortly. Here's a gratuitous soccer hottie, just cuz.



Mr. Clint Dempsey, show us your ...

...

...

well, whatever you want, sweet pea.

Don't Go Getting the Big Head, Clint

Now that you're Fulham's Player of the Month.

Big ups, Deuce!

Big Soccer Sunday!

USA 2, Brazil 4. Ok, we lost. But Brazil did not score one run-of-play goal. Not one. And we did. So, I give us a solid B and say that was some serious hotness on the field: Kaka, Benny Feilhaber, Clint Dempsey (with a very nice goal, but no dancing, dammit!), Little Michael Bradley, Josh Wolfe, Oguchi Onyewu... Serious heat, peoples.

Out on the left coast, the Red Bulls got pounded by Chivas USA. Yes, you read that right. All I can think right now is 'least said, soonest mended.' Let's hope so.

So, It was my birthday

and this is what Josie gave me. The Nemo she won at the fair, to remind me to 'just keep swimming, just keep swimming - what do we do? we swim swim swim' and this lovely poster that declares her love for me, adds 10 years to my age and calls me Oldelocks to boot.

If she had been born first, she'd be an only child.

That's My Boy

And his Balto.

Took the gang to the Sevier County fair last night.

Josie beat her older sister in the water gun game and won a stuffed Nemo.

Austin took $2 over to the basketball game. He paid and the guy kept giving the ball to this other kid who could not sink a shot and kept handing the guy another $2 to try again. I was just about to go postal on him when he realized he was ignoring Austin, apologized and gave him the ball. Austin moved a step forward. He got into his "shot stance" (I don't know what else to call it, so I apologize - apologies are contagious!). I was trying to say bounce it a couple of times just to get a feel for it and have a little more of a chance at it, but he was already arm back and throwing.

Nothing but net, baby.

Fortunately, we had a pedestrian witness. The guy had gone back to LoserDude and was paying absolutely no attention. In fact, he seemed quite incredulous that it had gone in. Like that never happened at his game...


Anyway, Austin has his Major Prize. I'm glad it's not a leg-shaped lamp.

A Letter From Henry

Henry Rollins on David Beckham, soccer, metrosexuality, etc.

Gotta remember to see if I get IFC.

Scientology...gay!!!

Landon Donovan, I Feel Your Pain

Well, maybe not physically.

But psychically, yep, I'm right there with you, dude.


Yesterday, nothing went right. Not one damn thing. USA loses to Sweden - ok, that's not unexpected. But does Cherundolo have to be pushed around like a nerd between two schoolyard bullies? NY loses to DC. Again, not unexpected, and as Austin said, at least we won it once. But 2-0 in the first eight minutes? 2 to freakin' nothing in EIGHT minutes? I hate Ben Olsen. I hope he has multiple flat tires on the interstate in the rain. I hope he spills his coffee all over his man parts in the drive thru at Mickey D's. I hope he has lots of ugly ungrateful children. I ... well, I should save some of the hate for Jaime Moreno and his 108, but that kind of rhymes so it almost makes it ok. Godfather of Goals, my ass, tho.

Tonight, it's the Superclasico. I don't really have a dog in that fight, but I gotta hope the Galaxy win. I like their uniforms better. But Sacha Kljestan *is* kind of cute and Jonathan Bornstein, he's not hard to look at either. Here's my prediction: Beckham won't play, but Landon will; Gals will eke out a win; goats all over California will be nervous; I will feel right with God when the jerseys come off.

It should be noted that, just in case none of this happens, it was because of ME. I have the Power. The Power of Opposite, whereby the exact opposite of whatever I think will happen, happens. Capisce?

Àngel + Altidore (with a little Mathis Magic) = Absolute Awesomeness

Everything Jeff Bradley asked for. And more. Nine freakin' goals. Atmosphere out the wazoo. Records broken. This was one of those games. Those games that set benchmarks, that are storied into myth, one of those games that I should've set the VCR for.


There were scuffles.


Becks did the whole 90. On turf.

And he looked really pissed about it. The Geico Gecko was never that ferocious.


My only complaint? Jerseys stayed decidedly ON. Even after the final whistle.



Usually Fox Soccer will replay their one allotted MLS game a gazillion times the following week. Not this time. "Real" soccer has started up out there in the Rest of the World, so time slots are scarce. MSG to the rescue, with replays Tuesday (9 pm, 11 pm and1 am) and Wednesday (noon, 2 pm and 6 pm). The only downside? Trying to watch Revs and Wizards last night - just wasn't worth it.

My Favorite Things

well, thing, actually. This commercial for Mastercard.




It almost makes me want to apply.

I learned something today...

I've been seeing this symbol on rear windows up and down I-40 for a while now. I thought it had something to do with Corona beer.


Turns out it's the official symbol of South Carolina.

Who knew?

This Week in MLS!

We learned the hokey-pokey.

Or is that some variation of the Chicken Dance? I dunno. I do know the Red Bulls looked good, in spite of Joe Vide's Sally Brown hair style, and that Jozy Altidore is Da Kid. In time he'll be Da Man, but at that point he'll probably be playing for some candy-ass YerOPean team.



That second goal was a thing of beauty.

I watched a little of the L. A. Galaxy/New England game and it was a study in contrasts. New York came out looking confident, in charge. It was obvious that it was just a matter of time before they put one in. L. A. (and I called it before the game started - no grass, no Beckham - do I win a prize?) just looked aimless, kind of like Crock's Lost Patrol, doomed to wander the MLS wastelands in search of goals and wins. Or just a common page to be on all together. I feel sorry for this team. It's as if their own management didn't quite believe they'd really scored Becks, and then it's damn! we better find him some talent to play with! so they go down to Trades R Us, shop the discount rack and come up with Carlos Pavon, Edson Buddle, Chris Klein and (just because it's Buy-One-Blond-Get-One-Free week) Abel Xavier. They're not a team, they're a random group of strangers. And in New England yesterday, they looked like they were waiting for a bus.

Beck's Big Day (version MLS)

In which he went from this (and if you look carefully you can still see the bruise. 8 weeks later)...



to this...

I regret that I did not get to see the entire game, but I did manage to see his first steps on the field and the jersey change. The shouts from the crowd - rock star worthy. One of the increasingly annoying ESPN announcers proclaimed it "Beatles-esque."

I won't indulge in any tacky wedding night metaphors. I think, like a lot of folks, I'm just glad to get that over with so we can get back to some semblance of normality. I do take exception to one piece of disinformation I've heard ad nauseum during this whole When Will David Play? saga. To wit, that his ankle has to be back to 100% before he'll play. 100%. Not 99 44/100. 100%.

And how many athletes DO play at 100%? Someone ask Cobi Jones when was the last time he played completely healthy. Or Carlos Mendes. Or Alejandro Moreno. Just don't ask Eddie Johnson because he has to be stretchered off after the game opening handshakes.

p.s. It was the biggest raindrops ever.